Franz, et al -
Sound powered phones were indeed employed in the '30s on board USN vessels. Whether or not there were watches stationed in these areas while the ship was at sea is IMHO debatable. I would question "why?" - a copy of the ship's Watch & Station Bill could answer your question.
I did similar modeling of the 08 Level At Sea Command Station on my NEW JERSEY (1:200) scale and to be honest, detailing all these extremely tiny items such as chart table, various bulkhead dials & boxes, etc. is almost a waste of time - had I
NOT left the canvas awning cover off, it would never have been seen by anyone looking at the model.
In the case of these areas on either side of the stack on my 1:200 scale PENNSY, I plan to do minimal interior detailing as it won't been seen under normal condition - unless a midget happens by and gets into the case!
In the matter of the .50 Browning Water Cooled MG's, here is an official publication illustration of the version probably used on these ships:
Attachment:
Pg. 82 MG Illustration & Description.JPG [ 115.84 KiB | Viewed 1747 times ]
As for the so-called "sticks" as you refer to them, I can only speculate that these are some sort of training aid for practice drills. Without incurring wrath & ire amongst the modeling elite, I seriously doubt that adding all this extraneous detail (hoses, etc.) at this scale would prove positive in the overall appearance. The water pump/tank is only an 8 gal. container, quite tiny in this instance. However, I may take up the challenge (since the gauntlet has been cast) and fashion one of these mounts just to see what it may look like, and then decide whether modeling 8 of these for my PENNSY will be appropriate, or simply fashion the MG on it's yoke mount and leave it at that.
In spite of having ideas of detailing everything that may have been installed, I am realizing that some precaution must be taken given the actual size & scale of the model at hand and whether such items are really necessary. But, I guess this is a personal judgement call.